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A fair and balanced compendium of spontaneous exclamations and excited utterances, with 22 entries on the front page. And, now, Home of the YATSASS™ Reports Yet Another True Story About Stupid Studies: • Breathing Bus Exhaust is Stressful • Depressed People May Take Drugs To Feel Better • Smart healthy people choose foods more wisely than stupid drunks • Stressed Out Moms Think Their Babies Are Annoying • People Are Groggy When They Wake Up • Airport Screeners Probably Can't Stop Spread of SARS & Flu • Study on Studies Yields Disappointment! • Lengthy Study with No Findings! A perfect YATSASS! • Making Fun Of Fat Kids Depresses Them • Drinking Highly Sugared Beverages Can Make You Fat! • Americans Prefer Safe & Effective Drugs to Unproven and Dangerous Ones • Study Shows Poor & Homeless Drink More Malt Liquor • Study on People in Studies Yields Predictable Answers, But Also Raises New Questions • Women Don't Like Getting Up to Feed the Newborn While Their Husbands Sleep Like Babies • Sperm Levels Drop With Frequent Ejaculation • People Who Don't Screw Around Get Less Clap • Swimming Can Cause Fluid Build-Up in Lungs • People Who Eat A Proper Diet are Healthier and Thinner • People who don't wet their pants feel better than people who do • Maybe Left Handed Winter Babies have More Brain Cancer, Maybe Not... • People who had nose jobs and people who didn't both like the same kind of noses • People pass more gas when they are active • Kids who spend too much time reading will get headaches • People who get drunk think others are more attractive than they do when they're sober In the old days, My thoughts were more coherent, and I could string together whole sequences of actual paragraphs! Those essays can be found here for those so interested.
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Friday, May 14, 2004 Posted 11:25 AM
  More Surprise About Outrage... The beheading of Nick Berg is an atrocity beyond our capability to understand or ever accept - if we are Americans, Europeans or from many of the world's other cultures. That is beyond doubt. But, Nick Berg was not in the United States, he was not in Paris, London or Tokyo. He was in Iraq. He may as well have been on Venus. Why do American's or Westerner's in general think that our standards, our morals, and our ethics and conventions are the right ones or the only ones? Why do we think of ourselves as "Westerners" at all? Standing in Hanoi, Los Angeles is to my East. Who says cannibalism bad? There are people who believe it to be a sacred rite and ordained by their divine spirit. Are they wrong because we are White? Or are they wrong because the Judeo Christian God is the only true God? Or is because we deem ourselves to be civilized and them to be barbarians? Ask a Native American how civilized they thought we were when we came over to their land in the 1600's. My point? When civilizations and cultures differ fundamentally on so many things, we must abandon any sense of what is absolutely right and absolutely wrong. We may know what is right for us, but how can we even presume to know what is right for them? Feed onions to a person, they like them or they don't. Feed onions to a dog and it grows anemic and dies. Did you know that? I'd be willing to bet that there are many Iraqi men who would prefer to be beheaded than to be forced to touch their penis to another man's anus, or to have his own anus touched by another man's penis. While we may find such behavior to be "mere fraternity hijinx," (as I think one senator described it) many in the Islamic world would be hard pressed to imagine anything more vile and offensive. Don't get me wrong - Nick Berg is an innocent victim and his death was senseless and cruel. He had nothing to do with the war crimes and atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib Prison (and all the other prisons you haven't heard about.) Nonetheless, he chose to go to Iraq on his own - something which many Iraqis find offensive in itself. And, he was well aware that it was dangerous to be there. Finally, he's not the first innocent person to fall victim to the pent up anger and frustration of a people; Can you say "Reginald Denny?" What is the moral difference between bashing in a truck driver's skull with a cinder block, lethally injecting a convict, beheading a chicken or beheading a person? Are you truly qualified to distinguish? What I understand is this: The United States of America needs to wake up as a people and come to its senses. Why is it illegal to show the coffins of our war dead? Why are we not allowed to see the other material from Abu Ghraib (if we choose to look)? Why are we in Iraq? What do we intend to do there? If we as a people are to make an informed decision as to whether or not we wish to wage war to establish our form of morals, ethics and values on an alien civilization, we need to be fully informed. We need to be apprised of the monetary expense, the projected loss of human life, and the desired result of the effort. Whatever the decision, the citizens of the United States need to turn off "The Apprentice" and pay attention to the Iraq situation. Then, as Josie and the Pussycats sang in one of the most under-rated movies ever, "Are you in, or are you out?..." If we're out, let's get the hell out. We've done enough damage to ourselves and others. If we're in, then let's stop pussyfooting around. People on both sides are dying horrific deaths and money is flowing as fast as the blood of the children. Get it done. Send in enough troops and enough weapons to annihilate the "enemy." It "worked" with the Native Americans, it worked with Japan. Look at what we were able to do in Panama and Grenada! If we are going to impose our standards, morals and laws on them, we really do need to kill most of them first. Whatever you decide, at least your own God will be judging you. © 2002-2008 Rob Falk, All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Denied. Your mileage won't vary; it will be less. | Subscribe to Rants!
  
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